Jacalyn Duffin
Jacalyn Duffin
@drugshortage.bsky.social

hematologist, historian, and drug shortage activist

Jacalyn M. Duffin is a Canadian medical historian and hematologist. She held the Hannah Chair, History of Medicine at Queen's University from 1988 until 2017. Formerly, she was president of the American Association for the History of Medicine and Canadian Society for the History of Medicine. From 1993 to 1995 she was Associate Dean Undergraduate Studies and Education at Queen's University. She is most well known for her testimony which led to the canonization of Marie-Marguerite d'Youville. As of 2010, she has published eight books on the history of medicine and has written numerous articles on various subjects relating to the history of medicine, miracles, and hematology. In 2019, Duffin was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. .. more

History 40%
Psychology 16%

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Thank you Jacalyn Duffin @drugshortage.bsky.social for this generous and thoughtful review of our archive 😍

medhum.org/review/jacal...
Assistedlab.ch–A Living Archive of Assisted Dying
A thoughtful review of a Swiss-based digital archive examining cultural dimensions of assisted dying debates.
medhum.org

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

First, U.S. states started creating their own vaccination consortiums. Will participation in global health networks be next? www.npr.org/2026/01/28/g...
As the U.S. bids adieu to the World Health Organization, California says hello
In the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from WHO, California is the first state to participate in the agency's disease monitoring network. Are others following?
www.npr.org
In a perfect world, vaccine childhood vaccine mandates wouldn't be necessary. But we live in a world where grifters will sacrifice children for political and financial gain, so we need to protect kids, by @picardonhealth.bsky.social www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/0fc7a92... via @theglobeandmail.com
Should we do away with childhood vaccine mandates?
It would be nice if voluntary programs were sufficient, but that’s not the case
www.theglobeandmail.com

Reposted by Robert Wolfe

@christian-s-warren.bsky.social Good points! Also Pete Seeger recorded (but did not release) a cod-liver oil parody about Canadian medicare, written by Helen and Earl Robinson www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNvp.... Read all about it in our 2018 article utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/...

Golding, Lord of the Flies; Mark Haddon, Curious case of the Dog in the NIght

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

about the nonsense about allies hanging back... eloquent editorial in Toronto Globe and Mail

www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...
Globe editorial: In service to Canada, and our allies
Despite Donald Trump’s insulting claim, tens of thousands of Canadians fought in Afghanistan. And 158 of them died in that conflict
www.theglobeandmail.com

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

In 2023, I wrote about "Hansen's Disease, Han's Disease, & the Global History of Leprosy," doi.org/10.17613/pad.... All three of these essays still make good reading today, b/c they capture the important work that's been done the past few years not just in #histmed, but also in the paleosciences.

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

excellent thread on the costs of Trump
1/ Others have pointed this out, but there are massive hidden costs in terms of effort and contingency planning to all the Trump threats that never materialize because he never meant them, TACO'd, got talked out of it, or got distracted.

I wanted to talk about why by explaining risk mitigation.
Canada sent so many dedicated young people into the hellfire of Kandahar to help the United States.
Now they ridicule us.
JD Vance says he is tired of our "sob stories".
Trump says they never needed us.
Never again, America, Never again.

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Imagine how 100+ million people in Russia could live if the system in Moscow stopped draining the country’s wealth.

A resource-rich nation redirected toward corruption and war instead of people and cities.

The wealth exists.
The potential exists.
A C-list anti-vaxxer wanted to know if I was really stupid enough to believe that vaccines work by preventing disease, not infection. Yes, if “stupid” means 200 years of evidence

History class is in session. Do you know why vaccines are called vaccines?
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/how-vaccin...
How Vaccines Actually Work
Vaccines prevent disease, not infection, no matter how the word "vaccine" is defined
rasmussenretorts.substack.com
I would struggle to trust an academic who doesn‘t know how to
use AI tools.
Which is not the same as not being critical.
Selena Simmons-Duffin at NPR broke the news about the trans kids’ health care ban, and now she’s following up. Note that she actually talks to doctors and trans kids, not just politicians.

www.npr.org/sections/sho...
Trump's push to end transgender care for young people opposed by pediatricians
Doctors and children's hospitals say nothing in the evidence has changed to justify the Trump administration's efforts to ban gender-affirming care for teens and tweens.
www.npr.org

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Building on work that @tarakiran.bsky.social and I published 5 yrs ago, we're excited to announce the first of two new papers on the #GenderPayGap in Canadian medicine. This one is for @jama.com.

Data shows "pink collaring" or devaluation. Incomes going down when women enter a specialty.

#Medsky🧵
Proportion of Female Physicians in a Specialty and Median Annual Payments
This cross-sectional study evaluates whether an increase in the proportion of female physicians in a specialty is associated with a decrease in the median annual payments for that specialty.
jamanetwork.com
Ahmed al Ahmed, a Lebanese Muslim who owns a Sydney fruit shop, risked his life to disarm one of the Bondi Beach shooters.

His courage gives me hope amidst the horror and darkness. Muslims and Jews are not enemies. Our futures, in the Middle East and beyond, are intrinsically bound.

A true hero.

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Diamondback Squids (Thysanoteuthis rhombus) lay their eggs in giant pink slinkies. These egg masses are made up of two threads of eggs wrapped around a cylinder of mucus.

These egg masses contain 35,000 to 75,000 eggs and have a length of 60 cm to 180 cm long with a diameter of 11 to 30 cm.

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

wow
Watch this. Then remember that the president doesn’t care. He cares that his old ass gets richer in the hand full of years he may have left.

And his sick rich friends. The most corrupt evil man to ever serve as president is ignoring real evil
💔 A European Parliament interpreter could not hold back tears during the speech of 11-year-old Roman Oleksiv from Lviv.

The boy survived a missile strike on Vinnytsia on July 14, 2022, which killed his mother - it was the last time he saw her alive.

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Dr. Elaine Ma is a hero in Kingston. Doug Ford is NOT!

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

We're inundated with stories of violence--the "conventional" violence of bombs and beatings, and the "slow violence" of health and social structures being erased. As winter descends, I offer the notion of vitamin D deficiency as "slow violence."
🗃️ #histmed
substack.com/home/post/p-...
Slow Violence, Low Vitamins
The harm done by vitamin D deficiency is hard to track, especially if no one is tracking it.
substack.com

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

An elephant protecting its young from a dragon.
#ElephantonFriday
BnF MS Latin 6838B; anonymi tractatus de quadrupedibus, de avibus et de piscibus; 14th century; f.4v
@gallicabnf.bsky.social

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Jean-François Braunstein en roue libre !
A couple weeks ago we got a lovely note from someone on the other side of the country thanking us profusely for ILLing a book to them. Curious, we looked up the book they borrowed.

It would have cost $1,200 for them to purchase it.

ILL is one of the things I love most about libraries.
Requested a book through ILL over break. It arrived today. Libraries man.
Requested a book through ILL over break. It arrived today. Libraries man.
"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se
‼️ Friends, this is very important. Please share to whoever this may concern, especially if you are in the United States.

Ukraine wants peace. Lasting, just, sustainable peace, and not a pause before the next bloodbath. I cannot stress this enough.

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Meet IHPST alumna Alison Li (PhD 1992), who was awarded the Jason A. Hannah Medal by the Royal Society of Canada for Wondrous Transformations (UNC Press, 2023).
🏅 The medal honors outstanding work in the history of medicine published in the past five years.

Reposted by Jacalyn Duffin

Dr. Ammar Rashid, a Pakistani immigrant, was recognized in 2022 for his work in improving access to family medicine in Kingston.

Ontario’s plan to restrict residency matching to international grads with two years of Ontario high school would shut out talent when we need it most.